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If you would have to guess the value of the infinite sum 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + …, what would you do? The value of the individual terms clearly goes to zero. But does that mean that the total sum will be finite? Well, it doesn’t. This was already proven by Nicole Oresme in about 1350. The proof is actually… read more

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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) must surely be the greatest physics experiment ever. Remarkably, you can follow the day-to-day operations of this experiment on the web, through the online dashboard. Have a look! The fascinating thing is that such a large machine is needed to study the smallest of things, elementary particles. The LHC is a particle collider that… read more

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Showing mathematical formulas on the web is not straightforward, as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) does not contain built-in commands to typeset mathematics. Although MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) was designed to be an extension of the standard markup language for mathematics, it is not yet supported by all browsers, so it’s not quite ready for prime time! So we are stuck with… read more

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Pinhole photography is arguably the most simple form of photography. Instead of using an actual lens, a simple hole is all that is needed. All rays of light from the scene pass through this hole, forming an inverted image inside of the camera. Pinhole photos are blurry, but this is somewhat compensated by their depth of field being practically unlimited. I use... read more

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This is the green entrance light of the harbour of Emmeloord, The Netherlands. The harbour, part of the Schokland UNESCO World Heritage site, is actually surrounded by meadows since the draining of the Zuiderzee. read more